The plot: The Center of Disease Control dispatches an
international team of doctors to stop an airborne virus from
spreading.

Genre: Horror, thriller.

Rating: PG-13.

‘Warrior’

Director: Gavin O’Connor.

Starring: Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte.

The plot: Ex-marine Tommy Riordin returns to his hometown to
train for a mixed martial arts tournament.

Genre: Drama, action.

Rating: PG-13.

Film roundup

‘FRIGHT NIGHT’

★★ (out of four)

Most horror movies, good or bad or in between, at least have an
easy time establishing a consistent tone — scary or campy, or a
deft mix of both, if the director really knows what they’re doing
and can effectively juggle different sub-genres. Craig Gillespie’s
remake of the 1980s camp classic “Fright Night,” however, never
seems to find its place. A choppy and confused blend of
old-fashioned vampire horror and more self-aware, borderline-meta
camp, the movie never properly gels (especially when it tries to
add genre homage into the mix, best exemplified in the scene where
original “Fright Night” star Chris Sarandon shows up in an
unimaginative token cameo as an ill-fated motorist).

‘RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES’

★★★ 1⁄2

More morality play than typical summer blockbuster, this “Planet
of the Apes” envisions a not-too-distant future in which human
greed and arrogance lays the groundwork for the primate-run society
first seen in the 1968 film with Charlton Heston. Our primary human
protagonist is medical researcher Will Rodman (James Franco,
looking way too spaced out to be believable as an M.D.), an
altruistic lad who is working tirelessly to find a cure for
Alzheimer’s, the disease that is slowing destroying his father
(John Lithgow). After a lab mishap involving an aggressive ape
leaves him without a prime test subject for his regenerative
“cure,” Will secretly takes home that ape’s offspring, named Caesar
(played by Andy Serkis, king of the blue-screen), to conduct
private research.

‘COWBOYS & ALIENS’

★★ 1⁄2

I always appreciate it when a film makes an effort to show me
something I haven’t seen before, and I’m willing to forgive a great
many oversights in exchange for that spark of creativity. “Cowboys
& Aliens” (based on the comic book by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg,
but credited to no less than eight screenwriters) offers up an
intriguing blend of the Western, adventure and science-fiction
genres, and that alone is a novel enough concept to pique my
interest. The film has a lot of fun with the madcap mixup and even
includes several blink-and-you’ll-miss-them nods to such genre
staples as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “The Searchers,” and I can
honestly say that I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

‘HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HOLLOWS: PART
2’

★★★ 1⁄2

There’s something to be said for a book franchise that has
almost single-handedly instilled a love of reading into a whole
generation of youths, and a movie franchise that has brought
genuine joy to hundreds of millions of people. In the end, the
positive residual effects of Pottermania easily trump the cynicism
and greed that went into its creation. And despite its status as a
studio product, I defy any old-fashioned, entertainment-seeking
moviegoer to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” and
come away dissatisfied.

Times like these, you have to seek comfort wherever you can find
it. I often look to movies for some extra degree of solace, and it
seems that sometimes it can be found in the unlikeliest of
places.

It is in this spirit that I recommend not one but three films
this week, all of which in their own distinct and sometimes subtle
ways make the viewer feel just a tad bit better about the world we
live in. They do not achieve this effect via any conventional means
(e.g. “heart-warming” stories, pat characterizations, emotional
manipulation, etc.), but rather by adhering to a set of social
ethics and doing their small part to better society.

Admittedly, these films can at times be panic-inducing and
horrific (see pick No. 2 in particular) or seemingly superfluous
(“Our Idiot Brother,” now playing nationwide in what is,
unfortunately, going to end up as a very limited engagement). The
final pick is absolutely gut-wrenching, but recent headlines have
given its story a faint yet important silver lining.

In any case, they have each done their part to make my week more
bearable and ebb my increasingly bleak view of this entire sick
circus we like to pretend is a functional society. On a lighter
note, things will be significantly less weighty next week as we
look at the found-footage thriller “Apollo 18.” (“Shark Night 3-D”
got nixed because, as reader Chris Wallace points out, it is rated
PG-13 and is therefore likely to be worthless. Oh, well.)

I almost skipped “Our Idiot Brother” this week in favor of
“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark,” but as usual critical consensus
ended up guiding my decision. Once again I am glad I heeded word of
mouth, because instead of the pleasant but disposable hipster
comedy I was expecting, I found a skillfully layered, penetrating
character study that deserves comparisons to some of the better
works of Woody Allen. This is entirely removed from the rest of the
comedies we have seen this summer -- as good as some of them have
been, none have even approached the level of genuine comic pathos
on display here.

This layering of rich characterizations, alternately gentle and
pointed humor, and philosophical subtext (the most dense I’ve seen
since in a comedy since “Leaves of Grass”) can probably be
attributed to screenwriter David Schisgal, a former Harvard
philosophy student with a background in documentaries, rather than
studio stooge Jesse Peretz. The director showcases an unusual
visual flair, and it’s rare that modern comedies are able to invoke
subtle flashes of New Wave or otherwise impressionistic influence,
as Peretz does here. But it is ultimately the strength of the
film’s script and performances that set it apart.

The plot of “Our Idiot Brother” is like a heady mix of “Hannah
and Her Sisters,” “The Jerk” and De Sica’s neorealist classic
“Umberto D.” (complete with a probing of social plights facing
outcasts). Paul Rudd stars as Ned, a goofy but affable organic
farmer who, as the film opens, is busted for selling marijuana to a
uniformed cop. A few months later he is released for good behavior
and finds that his formerly happy life has been upended: his
shrewish girlfriend has “moved on” with an even more dimwitted acid
casualty, and refuses to let Ned see his beloved golden retriever,
Willie Nelson.

The rest of the film charts Ned’s progress (or lack thereof) as
he endeavors to save $1,000 to get his own place to stay and prove
he can take care of Willie Nelson. Meantime he must shack up with
whichever of his three more successful sisters will take him in,
but the situation is complicated by the fact that Ned simply does
not know when to shut up. His “big mouth” invites painful
consequences, such as when he unintentionally spills the beans
about various infidelities surrounding his sisters’
relationships.

But Ned means no harm, and is actually the only completely
decent, reasonable person in his entire family. It is through this
character that Peretz and Schisgall fashion a lean, effective,
sometimes nasty but always rewarding slice-of-life that says more
about how people relate to one another than most serious films do,
without ever seeming to “say” anything at all. It’s a modest film
with no clearly telegraphed message, tied together by Rudd’s very
impressive centerpiece performance. I’ve been a fan for decades,
but this is the first time I’ve seen Rudd give an actual,
honest-to-goodness, nuanced performance. Either he has grown
significantly as an actor in the past few years, or Ned is simply
the role he was born to play.

I’ve been on a bit of a documentary kick lately, and recently
saw two that I feel morally obligated to recommend. The first is
“Inside Job,” which won last year’s Oscar for best documentary
feature but remained unseen by me until a few days ago. I’ve
watched it four times since then, and am hard-pressed to think of a
more important film from the past several years.

Directed by Charles Ferguson (of the exceptional Iraq war
analysis “No End in Sight”), the film is a clear, concise,
point-by-point examination of how the global financial crisis of
2008 occurred. Broken into easy-to-digest chapters focused on
different facets an elaborate Ponzi scheme perpetrated by the
world’s major power-players, the film makes a case that is simply
impossible to argue against. An enemy of political partisanship and
even ideology itself (after all, a blind adherence to
anti-regulation dogma is largely what got us into this mess),
Ferguson takes no prisoners in his exhaustive probing of everything
from the savings and loan scandals of the 1980s to recent
white-collar shenanigans involving sub-prime mortgages and
derivatives markets.

By the end you will be angry, and the film serves, above all
else, as a call to action for true patriots -- those who care about
the state of their country and the people in it, rather than the
success or failure of various political parties or ideologies. The
film argues that the system can be fixed, with a minimal amount of
sanity and regulation, and that change is worth fighting for. While
I am still of the opinion that the America we know will simply not
exist in another 20 years, Ferguson’s film is, in some small but
vital way, damn inspiring.

I first saw “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood
Hills” around the time of its release 15 years ago (I recently
caught half of it again on IFC), and I remember being completely
transfixed by its account of the child murders in Arkansas that
resulted in the wrongful conviction of the West Memphis Three:
Damien Echols, Jessie Misskelley Jr. and Jason Baldwin, anti-social
teenaged friends who were unfortunate enough to draw their
community’s attention following the brutal rape and murder of three
young boys in the woods surrounding their town. Despite clearly
coerced “confessions” and a lack of any actual evidence whatsoever,
the trio was charged in the court of public opinion and effectively
convicted before the case ever went to trial.

With ignorance and religious fervor gripping the community, the
defendants were railroaded by a broken justice system that,
structurally speaking, never even allowed them a chance to prove
their innocence. It’s the kind of story that makes one ashamed to
be an American, or a member of the human race at all, for that
matter. This is a long, arduous, infinitely disturbing chronicle
that pulls no absolutely no punches in its depiction of both
tragedies that occurred around West Memphis. Yet, through all the
pain and suffering, there are some very positive things to glean
from “Paradise Lost.”

First, the fact that the film was made at all is quite
encouraging -- the vast majority of people may be animals governed
by nothing except their own instinct for self-preservation, but
there are those who are willing to stand up for fight for what’s
right, even if they are themselves vilified in the process. In
addition, the story gets an important silver lining: Last month the
West Memphis Three were released from prison. They will be
registered as convicted felons for life and will always be branded
as child killers by idiots who have no idea what they’re talking
about, but the fact that they won’t rot away in prison is enough to
bolster my confidence in our society just a tiny little bit.